First go at M42 for a while!

[Budgie1]

I last imaged M42 back in 2012 from the Isle of Lewis. Since I started back into the hobby last year it has been hidden by trees and hills in my new location, so I only get a brief glimpse of it each night.

Last night I decided to have a go and see what I could get. Not much as it turned out because I messed around lining up and trying 180 second exposures (too long) so settled on 90 seconds. By this time I only managed to get 7 subs of 90 seconds before the trees started to act like a Bahtinov Mask on the image, so that was end of that for the night.

Tonight I thought I would stack & process what I did get and was very surprised at the results.

This is 7x90s subs or 10.5 minutes total ingestion time. The kit is ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled to -10°C and gain of 120, SW Evostar 100ED Pro on a EQ5 mount using PHD2 & APT. Stacked with darks, flats & dark-flats in DSS & post processing in PixInsight.

I'm amazed at the detail it's captured for so little data and something so low in the sky.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Budgie1
Spelling

[happy-kat]

That's a lovely capture and must have been very pleasing after so many years since the first.

[callisto]

Great image

[Jannis]

That's only 10.5 min exposure? Wow, i think i really need a camera upgrade soon...

Really nice capture and processing.

[Budgie1]

33 minutes ago, Jannis said:

That's only 10.5 min exposure? Wow, i think i really need a camera upgrade soon...

Really nice capture and processing.

It shocked me too!

I though there would be some of the main nebulosity in there but never expected as much detail with the dark dust. I also thought the centre was blown out but when I reduced it with curves the stars & dust detail came through.

I'm back on it just now and will get some more data at 90 & 45 seconds to add to this and see what else comes out.

[Philter]

Wow. I'd say that's a great image in general but for 10.5 minutes it's amazing! It puts my efforts to shame  

[Budgie1]

I've just noticed that I missed off one detail from the original post that may explain the good data:

I do live in a Bortle 2 area, so no LP to contend with and the only filter on the camera is a UV/IR cut.

[KEJ]

Bortle 2, nice!

[Tiago Ferreira]

nice!

[Philter]

4 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

I've just noticed that I missed off one detail from the original post that may explain the good data:

I do live in a Bortle 2 area, so no LP to contend with and the only filter on the camera is a UV/IR cut.

Bortle 2! I'm jealous, ha ha.

It's still a great capture and I'd love to see what would get with more time.

[Budgie1]

20 minutes ago, Philter said:

Bortle 2! I'm jealous, ha ha.

It's still a great capture and I'd love to see what would get with more time.

I managed to get another 17 x 90s exposures last night, although I may have to ditch a couple due to the trees. Hopefully I'll get these stacked and processed this evening and include the 7 from the other night. 

I'll post up the result tonight or tomorrow.

[Philter]

Ah, trees. I ran into that problem the other night. I look forward to the result.

[Budgie1]

Well here's the slightly longer exposure.

This one is 22x90s (33 minutes total) using the same settings & kit as in the first post. 

I had more issues with the core on this one and could have done with some 30 or 45 second subs to reduce the core. But it is what it is and I took it to where it looked okay to me. There is more in there but when I brought it out it just didn't look right as a whole, so I ended up with this.

There is more dark detail in this one and it was a really clean image, hardly any noise reduction required, even though I managed to introduce some in the post-processing.

I hope you like it.

[KEJ]

Out of interest and I am not sure what approach you chaps normally take.

And bearing in mind, this is just a screen print and my initial image on the left, I did take longer to process that in PS.

 

Left

Usually I throw all my 10/30/60/120 exposures in together, stack(DSS) and then PS etc.

 

Right

So, yesterday afternoon (taking not as much time as I normally would on the final image) I stacked the individual exposures for each duration in groups to end up with 4 stacked pictures(10/30/60/120) and then I did a HDR merge. Hard to see on these screen prints, but there was a difference and possibly something I may try in the future going forward now.

 

The original on the left and the HDR merge on the right( I did spend a fair amount of time doing the original to be honest).   But you can see a bit more finer detail on the right.

[Philter]

Very nice. I can see the dark detail the extra data has brought out. It's a lovely image.

[KEJ]

10 hours ago, Philter said:

Very nice. I can see the dark detail the extra data has brought out. It's a lovely image.

Cheers, still learning and its a bit hard to see with a lower res screen print, I will have another go at it sometime to try a bit more post PS

[MartinB]

On 05/03/2021 at 21:32, Budgie1 said:

Well here's the slightly longer exposure.

This one is 22x90s (33 minutes total) using the same settings & kit as in the first post. 

I had more issues with the core on this one and could have done with some 30 or 45 second subs to reduce the core. But it is what it is and I took it to where it looked okay to me. There is more in there but when I brought it out it just didn't look right as a whole, so I ended up with this.

There is more dark detail in this one and it was a really clean image, hardly any noise reduction required, even though I managed to introduce some in the post-processing.

I hope you like it.

Terrific!  I like M42 to have a very bright core and am not keen on desperate attempts to calm it down to clearly show the trapezium, it makes the images look like M42 has had a bucket of water thrown on it!  

Given the short overall exposure time I'm wondering whether you are using the camera in 11mp mode or fully unbinned.

[Budgie1]

1 hour ago, MartinB said:

Terrific!  I like M42 to have a very bright core and am not keen on desperate attempts to calm it down to clearly show the trapezium, it makes the images look like M42 has had a bucket of water thrown on it!  

Given the short overall exposure time I'm wondering whether you are using the camera in 11mp mode or fully unbinned.

I'm using the 11MP mode with 4144 x 2188 images & pixel size of 4.63um.

The Bortle 2 skies and only the UV/IR filter also helps.

I may have another go at processing the second image because the detail isn't as defined as it is in the first one, despite there being more data.

[Budgie1]

I did another process of the 33 minute stack because I wasn't happy with the way it came out.

This one is more sympathetic and I used no noise reduction on it, although I did reduce the stars slightly using EZ Star Reduction. 

I still don't think it has as much details as the original 10.5 minute image in the first post.